MINNEAPOLIS (CN) — Jury selection is on hold in the murder trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin after a Monday morning debate over whether it could still be conducted with major appeals pending.
Attorneys in Chauvin’s trial for second-degree murder and manslaughter of George Floyd were set to begin jury selection Monday for a trial beginning at the end of the month. The process was delayed, however, by an extended debate over whether Hennepin County Judge Peter Cahill has jurisdiction to proceed with seating a jury while defense attorneys appeal a Minnesota Court of Appeals decision allowing for the addition of a third-degree murder charge.
Assistant Attorney General Matthew Frank, who has handled the prosecution since the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office took it over in June, argued that a jury would need to know the charges involved in the case.
He pointed out that if Chauvin’s attorney Eric Nelson opted to appeal to the Minnesota Supreme Court – which Nelson later confirmed he would – the court could take months to reach a decision.
“If we start picking a jury, it’s likely we would get 14 jurors well before those deadlines,” Frank said.
That possibility, Frank said, could mean having to redo voir dire and other important processes.
“The bottom line is, we’re creating a potential problem that cannot be waived, cannot be agreed to by the parties,” he said.
Nelson disagreed, arguing that the issue of a third-degree charge was relatively narrow and that there was a strong probability that the Supreme Court would act quickly on the high-urgency case.
“We have a three-week window of time where we can accomplish a lot. Theoretically, I can file my petition for review tomorrow,” he said.
Cahill was skeptical of Frank’s opinion, barraging him with questions about how the case differed from any other murder case with lesser-included charges.
“Generally on a homicide case, there are multiple charges, multiple degrees,” he said. “This is not unique to this case.”
The judge said that while he couldn’t consider matters related to the third-degree murder charge, he saw no issue with proceeding to pick a jury.
“Certainly you’re in your rights at this point, since you think I’m acting without jurisdiction, to seek a writ of prohibition,” he told Frank, and asked him to consider the possibility during a recess.
After the recess, Frank told Cahill he would be seeking that writ, and Cahill dismissed prospective jurors for the day in anticipation of spending the rest of the hearing on motions in limine.
For Bradford Colbert, a professor at St. Paul’s Mitchell Hamline School of Law and public defender, the situation is somewhat bizarre.
“I was amused at that,” he said of the fact that the parties were waiting for a phone call from the appeals court. “Generally, there are some courts that – there is no precedent to force the court of appeals to issue… It’s not Amazon, they don’t say ‘we’ll get back to you in 24 hours.’”
“Usually they like to go at their own pace, but it’s fair to say the Court of Appeals is following this the same as everybody else is,” he said.
Colbert’s colleague Ted Sampsell-Jones, also a Mitchell Hamline professor, agreed that the entire situation was unusual.
“In federal court, there's clearer law on this -- but in Minnesota, the law isn't clear,” Sampsell-Jones wrote in an email. “Ordinarily, a trial court would not start trial at all, including jury selection, while a pretrial appeal is pending. Ordinarily, a trial court would wait for a final judgment from the appellate courts, and then schedule the start of trial.”